i've been counting down since last Dec 26 ... are you ready? me neither!!

Monday, April 30, 2007

I posted this ... "Bloom Dates According to Mother Nature"This morning (4/25), when my Visiting Teaching fell through, I decided that I wanted to run up to see the tulip fields at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. After picking up the girls from school, we came home and I dressed Ammon, fed Easton, packed sack lunches, located mud boots and loaded in the van. (... let me sum up) I pulled into a muddy parking lot and we all got out to inspect the hewn down flowers. The kids picked up a few scraggily lifeless tulips [photo op!] and we vowed to come next year on Elyssa's birthday [April 11th] that way we wouldn't miss them!! We headed back to I-5 in search of a potty and I pulled into the parking lot of the Tulip Festival office and parked, this time hauling everybody in. Luckily we were the only circus in the bathroom! Finished and ready for our journey home we walked out the doors and I saw a bench I hadn't noticed the first time I came to these doors. On the bench was a box ... full of Skagit Valley Tulip Festival booklets ... free for the taking ... with a centerfold map ... of the tulip fields. In big bold letters below the "Skagit Valley Tulip Festival 2007" was the culmination of our outting "Bloom Dates According to Mother Nature." There you have it folks ... and I don't make this stuff up!

and then on my birthday (4/28) Alicia called me and said, "I'm tiptoeing thru the tulips!" She was in Tulip Town and though they were not wide open fields ... there were tulips standing in the field nonetheless! BAH ... that makes my idiocy/stupidity worse!! Next year I will bring a map and we WILL see tulips, daffodils and irises blooming according to mother nature!

celebration central

my greatest blessings

ie: chaos creators

must remind myself

"So frequently we mistakenly believe that our children need more things, when in reality their silent pleadings are simply for more of our time." Thomas S. Monson

"There is no other resource to compare with prayer. To think that each of us may approach our Father in Heaven . . . for individual help and guidance, for strength and faith, is a miracle in and of itself." President Gordon B. Hinckley

"Our friends should be companions who inspire us, who help us rise to our best." Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin

"Often we do not know what we can endure until after a trial of our faith." Elder Robert D. Hales

"You and I should count our blessings, but we should also make them count!" Elder Neal A. Maxwell

“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.” President Ezra Taft Benson